Rokurokubi
[8] Classical literature about rokurokubi describe tales of people witnessing and encountering floating heads at night time.
The story goes: in the first year of Kansei, in Echigo Province (now Fukui Prefecture), there was a house maidservant whose head rolled off the pillow while she was asleep, detached from the body.
[9] In Kokon Hyaku Monogatari Hyōban (古今百物語評判, 1686 CE), a book of ghost stories that explains yōkai tales by Yamaoka Genrin, there is a chapter called How Priest Zetsugan saw Rokurokubi in Higo (絶岸和尚肥後にて轆轤首を見給ふ事, Zetsugan Oshō Higo nite Rokurokubi wo Mitamou Koto).
"[10] In the same book, there is a story which tells of a woman in the village of Tawa, Nagao, Ōkawa District, Kagawa Prefecture (now Sanuki) who is a rokurokubi and has a ring-like bruise around her neck.
[4] In the Churyō Manroku (中陵漫録) is a tale which describes a "Rokurokubi Village" in the recesses of Mount Yoshino where all the residents, even children, wore scarves to cover a line around their necks.
[11] In the Kasshi Yawa (甲子夜話, c. 1821 CE) by Matsura Seizan is a story which tells of a woman in Hitachi Province who has a terminal illness.
It is thought that the idea of an extending neck originated from people misinterpreting visual depictions of nukekubi, the earlier kind of rokurokubi.
[17] For the soul to leave the body and create the shape of a neck, as seen in this story and the before mentioned Hokusō Sadan, is sometimes interpreted to be "ectoplasm" in parapsychology.
[18] In the late Edo period yomihon (illustrated novel), Rekkoku Kaidan Kikigaki Zōshi (列国怪談聞書帖) by Jippensha Ikku the author suggests the elongated necks of rokurokubi originate in the spiritual principle, karma.
For example, the Edo period author Ban Kōkei in his work "Kanden Kōhitsu" told a tale of a geisha at the Yoshiwara brothel whose neck would elongate in her sleep.
[20] Another example is a myth from the oral tradition of the Koikubo area of Iida, Nagano Prefecture where it is said a rokurokubi appeared in someone's home.
[21] In the Bunka period, a kaidan story became popular, where there was a prostitute whose neck would smoothly stretch and would lick the oil of paper lanterns when she slept with guests, showing how rokurokubi were spoken of as things that women would transform into or an illness that they would be afflicted with.
[4] The Shohō Kenbunroku (諸方見聞録) records a freak show in 1810 (Bunka 7) in Edo, now Tokyo where a male rokurokubi with an elongated neck appeared.
There was a tale of how a merchant and his wife from Shibaya town, Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture who witnessed their daughter's neck stretch every night.
Explanations and pictures about what's behind this trick were written in magazines of the Meiji period (1800s), giving a date for how early these shows first appeared.
[23] This was a time period when mystery phenomena were vigorously exposed by the scientifically-minded, so for magic tricks to be revealed is fitting with the zeitgeist.
In the Taishō period, there were businesses arranging rokurokubi to appear in show tents in festivals and fairs at temples and shrines and they were quite popular.
[4] Chinese stories also tell of a yōkai called a rakutō (落頭) whose head comes off and floats about while the torso remains at rest on the futon.
There is a tale that in the Three Kingdoms period, an Eastern Wu general, Zhu Huan employed a female servant who was a rakutō.
[4] The Chonchon is a mythical creature of South America which takes the form of a human head flying around in the air, sucking the life out of people.
The yōkai researcher, Tada Katsumi states that these stories arrived in Japan in the Muromachi to Azuchi-Momoyama periods, when there was still trade with southern China and Southeast Asia.
